Brad Bird May Raise ‘Here There Be Monsters’ From the Depths of Development Hell

Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull has been trying to get his Here There Be Monsters project going for quite a while. It’s a story of his own creation that tells the tale of John Paul Jones’ life as a Revolutionary War-era Naval Captain, but with a twist. In this telling of Jones’ story, there are added giant sea monsters and the like. As if Jones’ exploits weren’t exciting enough already.

In order to shepherd his dream to reality, Tull hired veteran screenwriter Brian Helgeland to get together a script, and he’s been searching around for a director as well. At one point it was looking like Robert Zemeckis might come on board, but that never came to fruition, and not much has been said about the film since. Hope is not lost for Tull and his dream of telling stories where historical figures grapple with giant squid, however, as someone close to the situation is telling Vulture that the project has new life.

Apparently Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird is interested in the project, and has been having some preliminary meetings with Tull and his people about taking it on. Bird was already a huge success in the animated world, directing all-time adventure classics like The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, but when it was announced that he would be doing the next Mission: Impossible movie there were questions as to whether or not he would be able to transition well into making live action films. Now that we’ve all seen that movie, I think it’s safe to say that the answer to that question is, “oh, hell yes,” so the idea of him taking on a sea epic is very intriguing. Heck, the idea of Robert Zemeckis making this movie was intriguing. If Bird comes on board I’ll go as far as to say that this movie has my timbers shivering.

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